Wordmanship: What is real language?

8:56 AM,
May 23, 2013

Written by

Terry Mapes
wordmanship.blogspot.com

One of my frustrations during my 40-plus years in journalism was interviewing people who never seemed to finish their sentences. They would start saying something interesting, and I would already be thinking about what a great quote this was going to be, but then they would stop in the middle and move on to the next sentence, without finishing that one either. I always had to choose from among the following: 1) finish their sentences for them, 2) paraphrase their statements or 3) quote them accurately as speaking in incomplete sentences. I almost never picked Option 3. I thought it would make my ...